27 Thursday Feb 2014
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Will You Be Long?
The edge of morning passed,
Awake, but scarcely,
I close the door on sleep
And you.
Words tip toe on your tongue
“Will you be long”?
The day’s rigours still arrayed,
Careless, yet besieged,
Through fibres stretched
We talk,
You send a signal clear and strong:
“Will you be long”?
Now night’s mid point breached
The conjugated I, you and we
Are six Autumns old
Or twelve,
My answer’s then both right and wrong
“Will you be long”?
“I always will belong”
26 Wednesday Feb 2014
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Angle Rue Hoche, Cannes
Rue Hoche will not play second violin to the Antibes.
As an autumn sun’s first glance touches your brow,
I see that even street cleaners wear Aviators here,
And smart women emerge, tottering on heels,
With shopping bags as red as lips, as big as mogul credit-limits
And head for splattered zincs to drink Bellini’s and smoke cigarettes,
Their iPhones prostrate now waiting for the throb of action
Soon there’s the clatter and laughter that comes from food,
Prosciutto and burrata with berries red and dark,
The sizzle and the smell of vongole steaming in garlic,
The comedy of giant pepper pots wielded like wands before you,
Arriving lovers raise sunglasses, kiss and sit,
You sip and tongue the rosé,
I taste the same philosophy.
Laura is not here today, except in spirit,
Her multi-coloured presence conjuring pleasure
To all who come upon this pavement heaven.
In full content, I note
The sun has charmed your freckles.
24 Monday Feb 2014
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Staccato but elegantly so,
All buttoned down,
Crisp and proper annunciation
Like a breakfast tea parade:
An epitome of courtesy,
You present your bow,
The gown, neat, straight, majestic;
An exhibition of precision and control,
The visage, stern – beyond irony –
Or so it seemed to Moss Close little men.
But there was another Ken
We grown ups saw:
The stiletto grin, the satirical brow,
The punctuated nod or expleted oui,
That wickedly gentle smile.
Or heard those breathless expressions of hilarity
That sixth form banter brought on
The stream of improper nouns:
Smashdom and grabbery.
The news of rum goings on in Mayfield
Or read the acute but never grave critiques
Of the cultural stuff that someone had to write…..
The patient farmer of young minds:
The Duty Master of La Comedie Humaine:
“Le milieu explique l’homme!”
17 Monday Feb 2014
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Lympstone
(Requieset in pace)
North wind rain – and rust struck sea,
The teeming tide, clutching the quay;
Gushed and washed and churned the sand
Took the breaths of those on land
The wind blows still!
And then a walk from Lympstone’s sea
My hand in yours, though only
The cold wind and the wind cold sea
To warm and comfort me….
The wind blows still!
Did you feel the cold wind too?
Emotions chained and endings due,
Post dinner, port at Jane’s
As I left for the wind cold rain
The wind blows still!
16 Sunday Feb 2014
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In a dusty room inside my head
You’ll find the common relics of my former lives.
In attic clutter, sets are stacked as in some lonely seaside shop –
Forlorn and fading slowly.
Saponaceous wraps are first to catch my nostalgic eye.
It’s Lux: The Soap of the Stars, and my mother’s pride, all perfumed pink and creamy.
Palmolive, green and slimy is sweating in more ordinary overalls.
Imperial Leather, yellowing, regal and surely misspelled is sitting alone in dacha exile.
Wright’s Cold Tar, also perhaps misnomer-ed, had ads by Billy and his lovely wife and girls.
Over there, Lifebuoy, the radioactive red tablet glows but grandma said we had no need of it.
If you must, try Shield, she said, it’s for young people who like showers.
Zest, low profile is on test? – You wake up bodies
as well as clean, I think.
In the closet, pure, dense and white and resting on a marble pedestal, Dove is cooing, and
Respectfully reminding us that she is not like the others.
She is indeed a Crème Bar – the richly moisturising antidote to barren skin that transcends mere soap I heard some voice declaim.
But was it just soft soap?
14 Friday Feb 2014
Posted in Poetry
At The National Portrait Gallery
I am sitting drinking coffee with Maggie Smith and Sylvia Syms.
The ladies are in a pensive mood and do not meet my vassal gaze.
Underneath my feet, I sense the gentle rumble of the Jubilee
Which spins my soaking brogues.
Above me, the January rain splats the Perspex canopy,
Its puddles refracting skeletons of trees against a Payne’s grey sky.
It’s warmer inside the snug corridors
Where time plays tricks and Tudors sit beside late Plantagenets.
The Stuarts live on the floor above,
Deposed perhaps, but reposing and depicted.
Here in the vaults, you’ll find more human portraiture,
The living subjects of more fundamental things:
Maternal hugs, lovers’ looks and friendly tourist encounters.
All the energy that comes from refreshing interactions
Which blunt the edge of this hard of hearing, grizzly day.
Even Sylvia seems ready to smile.
02 Sunday Feb 2014
Posted in Poetry
A Window on the Snow from The Uselessness of History by Scorpio with The Bookshop Band
Night stands
And holds the blizzard’s zeal.
A landscape
Of fantasy but real….
A face pressed against a window,
Looks out upon the square below,
Watching figures, walking slowly
Beyond the orange glow.
From trembling lips….
Breath mists the glass,
Obscures the present,
Illuminates the past.
Two lovers walking slowly,
Talking about so and so,
This and that and nothing,
Beyond the orange glow.
Too soon like antique seasons
You said you had to go,
Walking slowly, walking sadly,
Beyond the orange glow.
Flotsam and Jetsam 